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Friday, January 16, 2009

Napa Valley Register lays off 2 journalists

The Napa Valley Register, a newspaper owned by Lee Enterprises, is cutting costs and laid off two people in its newsroom -- photographer lianne Milton and copy editor Juan Curiel.

Lee, whose stock (LEE) was selling at 11.24 a year ago, is now a penny stock and has been laying off employees at its other papers. Lee's Billings Gazette in Montana, for instance, announced Tuesday it dismissed four full-time and four part-timers.

Here's how a Register columnist, Calvin Ross, looks at the newspaper industry (link). He doesn't mention the layoffs, however.

Ross writes:

As for newspapers versus the Internet, the jury’s already in: Half of Americans get their news from the Internet, with television, radio, and newspapers all in retreat. (It is worth noting that nearly all of the news content on the Internet, whether found on Yahoo or other so-called aggregator sites, is generated by people working in traditional newsrooms.)

In a nutshell, the problem for the newspaper industry — and the recording industry — lies at the intersection of distribution models and revenue models. The revenue model for newspapers is out-of-date and the distribution model for information is radically changing.

By and large, newspaper companies — again like the recording companies — didn’t adapt fast enough.